(With apologies to Mussorgsky, for the title)
It had been ten years since I attended one of the three-day "Super Seminars" offered by the California Society of Enrolled Agents, in Las Vegas and elsewhere. I had forgotten what it was like to sit in an uncomfortable hotel banquet chair for eight hours a day, so I signed up and found my way to the fastest growing city that gambling could put in the middle of the desert.
Continuing education is big business for CSEA. Practitioners from nearly every state attend one of their presentations each year. They gross nearly a million dollars annually from seminars, allowing them to pay their top salaried executive more than $140,000 a year. This year there were three "supers" -- one in Reno and two in Las Vegas. The evaluation sheet apologizes that they cannot offer these in California because some of their speakers are "contractually obligated" not to appear there. Oh, really? Since most of the speakers come from California, I think this is probably a state tax avoidance scheme. Set up a C corporation in Nevada, do all the work in Nevada, use the cash to pay medical and pension costs.
The problem with casino venues, of course, is that you have to walk through a pall of cigarette smoke in order to reach the nonsmoking areas where the classes are conducted. Add to that the dust and air pollution of a town that survives on travel and construction, and you need to remember to pack your allergy medicine.
There is a small coterie of speakers who have been appearing at these seminars for years. Most of them I recall from ten years ago. They are experienced and professional, and come across with all the enthusiasm of someone who has been doing this for decades.
There are four topics being offered during each seminar session -- one in the morning and two in the afternoon -- so it is usually possible to find at least one with some relevance to your practice, or at least some appeal to your intellectual curiosity. Like most continuing education, what you find is that 90% of the material is stuff you already know; 5% of it is stuff that you understand better than the instructor; and 5% is stuff you didn't know or had forgotten, which makes it all worthwhile. (It also helps to have the reaffirmation that you and the rest of the group are on the same page, for most of the topic's issues.)
I also enjoy rubbing shoulders with several hundred other practitioners, to observe who else is crazy enough to work in this field. Ten years ago, I felt somewhat out of place because I had a full head of hair and it was not gray or white. Who was going to replace these practitioners, when they retired? The answer this year is that there was a significant number of attendees who seemed to be in their 30s and 40s. This is a disappointment to those of us who hope that tax simplification will be brought about when there are no longer enough people to figure out how the complicated rules work.
Ten years ago, I also found it disturbing that minorities were represented at about the same level as one might find at a church potluck in northern Minnesota. This year, maybe five percent of the practitioners in attendance were African-American, and maybe ten percent were Asian-Americans. The glaring lack of diversity shows up when trying to find a Hispanic in the group. I saw a few, and I found a few Latino surnames on the posted list of those in attendance. Most of the attendees came from California, which has a 35% Hispanic population. (Yes, some of them are recent arrivals, but others can trace their California ancestry back a couple hundred years.) Do the Hispanic EA's in California have their own organization and seminars? (I noticed all of the seminar instructors are white, non-Hispanic.)
Ten years ago, the percentage of Super Seminar students who were morbidly obese seemed to be about twice that of what you would find in the general population. This year, based on unscientific observations in the hotel's buffet, the percentage is about the same. It's not that the practitioners have slimmed down, but the rest of the country has caught up.
It had been ten years since I attended one of the three-day "Super Seminars" offered by the California Society of Enrolled Agents, in Las Vegas and elsewhere. I had forgotten what it was like to sit in an uncomfortable hotel banquet chair for eight hours a day, so I signed up and found my way to the fastest growing city that gambling could put in the middle of the desert.
Continuing education is big business for CSEA. Practitioners from nearly every state attend one of their presentations each year. They gross nearly a million dollars annually from seminars, allowing them to pay their top salaried executive more than $140,000 a year. This year there were three "supers" -- one in Reno and two in Las Vegas. The evaluation sheet apologizes that they cannot offer these in California because some of their speakers are "contractually obligated" not to appear there. Oh, really? Since most of the speakers come from California, I think this is probably a state tax avoidance scheme. Set up a C corporation in Nevada, do all the work in Nevada, use the cash to pay medical and pension costs.
The problem with casino venues, of course, is that you have to walk through a pall of cigarette smoke in order to reach the nonsmoking areas where the classes are conducted. Add to that the dust and air pollution of a town that survives on travel and construction, and you need to remember to pack your allergy medicine.
There is a small coterie of speakers who have been appearing at these seminars for years. Most of them I recall from ten years ago. They are experienced and professional, and come across with all the enthusiasm of someone who has been doing this for decades.
There are four topics being offered during each seminar session -- one in the morning and two in the afternoon -- so it is usually possible to find at least one with some relevance to your practice, or at least some appeal to your intellectual curiosity. Like most continuing education, what you find is that 90% of the material is stuff you already know; 5% of it is stuff that you understand better than the instructor; and 5% is stuff you didn't know or had forgotten, which makes it all worthwhile. (It also helps to have the reaffirmation that you and the rest of the group are on the same page, for most of the topic's issues.)
I also enjoy rubbing shoulders with several hundred other practitioners, to observe who else is crazy enough to work in this field. Ten years ago, I felt somewhat out of place because I had a full head of hair and it was not gray or white. Who was going to replace these practitioners, when they retired? The answer this year is that there was a significant number of attendees who seemed to be in their 30s and 40s. This is a disappointment to those of us who hope that tax simplification will be brought about when there are no longer enough people to figure out how the complicated rules work.
Ten years ago, I also found it disturbing that minorities were represented at about the same level as one might find at a church potluck in northern Minnesota. This year, maybe five percent of the practitioners in attendance were African-American, and maybe ten percent were Asian-Americans. The glaring lack of diversity shows up when trying to find a Hispanic in the group. I saw a few, and I found a few Latino surnames on the posted list of those in attendance. Most of the attendees came from California, which has a 35% Hispanic population. (Yes, some of them are recent arrivals, but others can trace their California ancestry back a couple hundred years.) Do the Hispanic EA's in California have their own organization and seminars? (I noticed all of the seminar instructors are white, non-Hispanic.)
Ten years ago, the percentage of Super Seminar students who were morbidly obese seemed to be about twice that of what you would find in the general population. This year, based on unscientific observations in the hotel's buffet, the percentage is about the same. It's not that the practitioners have slimmed down, but the rest of the country has caught up.
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